Few have more swagger than Tommy Shelby. Within the opening minutes of Netflix’s Peaky Blinders (2013), he rides a horse down a dirty back street of Birmingham, England. Wearing a finely tailored suit and signature flat cap, he strikes an imposing figure. So much so that the people in the street make themselves scarce before his presence, for he is the embodiment of the Peaky Blinders gang.
Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning Re-recording Mixer/Supervising Sound Editor Lee Walpole — at Boom Post in London — was there at the start of Tommy Shelby’s story, helping shape the show’s distinctive sound. How fitting to have Walpole there to wrap things up in the film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man — now streaming on Netflix.
The film is a continuation of the Peaky Blinders series, preserving its gritty visual style, morally ambiguous cast of anti-heroes, and cool soundtrack featuring modern rock, punk, and blues tunes that juxtapose the story’s 1920s setting. Walpole also carried forward his established methods for Peaky Blinders sound, like having foley recorded on location. For The Immortal Man, he leaned on Sound Effects Recordist Ben Gale to record props and specific sounds, such as Tommy’s typewriter, his opium pipe, and all the windows and doors at Calke Abbey — the interior shooting location for Tommy’s house. And Production Sound Mixer Tom Williams captured all the on-set vehicles, including the canal boats. These location effects recordings provided a wealth of realistic, natural sounds that give Peaker Blinders a gritty feel.
Find out how the sound team sonically dealt with Tommy’s ghosts of the past, why the licensed music tracks determined sound design choices, what rhythmic background sounds were used to bridge past conflicts with the present, and more!
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man | Official Trailer | Netflix
This is it for Peaky Blinders’ Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy). Sonically, what were your goals for wrapping up this story? How did you use sound to make this a satisfying end chapter?
Lee Walpole (LW): The Immortal Man is very much a film of two halves. After an explosive, scene-setting opening, the film settles into a melancholy and reflective first section, playing with the tropes of a ghost story as we find Tommy living a self-imposed exile, haunted by the ghosts of his past. The music at the front of the film is sparse, and we utilize a layered sound design to bring this world to life and create a thick atmosphere of foreboding.
The second half of the film contains huge action sequences that take advantage of the budget and scale the movie format offers.
All the time, however, this is Tommy Shelby’s story. In our sound design, we were constantly seeking opportunities to explore and expose Tommy’s mental state and to experience the world through his lens. This can range from the obvious to the extremely subliminal. For example, the attentive viewer may note the deliberate timing of the distant bombs as Tommy has his palm read, the individual booms articulating particular phrases and revelations, or the increasing volume and bass of the rhythmic pounding of a distant factory as Duke faces the decision to betray Ada. Or the relentless ticking beat of blood dripping from a hanging pheasant corpse, that plays while Tommy’s voiceover informs us that his house is filled with ghosts from his past.
We were constantly seeking opportunities to explore and expose Tommy’s mental state and to experience the world through his lens.
Peaky Blinders has become renowned for its huge needle drops. We knew from the outset that getting the right balance between sound and music was going to be key to the audience experience. My first viewing of the film was three weeks into the director’s cut, along with composers Antony Genn and Martin Slattery. From the outset, we discussed together the importance of ensuring that the sound design and music did not fight. We recognized that by affording each other the necessary space at specific narrative points and predetermining what frequencies each element would require, we could create a clean, precise, and deliberate sound mix, where the track could go as big or quiet as required, without battering the viewer or having the sound design or music overwhelming each other.
I, along with sound designers Andy Kennedy and Saoirse Christopherson, was also tasked with using sound design to expand the sense of being in a country constantly battered by war. This ranges from sound telling the stories of distant bombing raids or the ensuing cleanup of debris, through to the ever-present clanks and the beating machinery of the Birmingham factories, creating whatever weaponry or parts the war effort required.
Finally, we identified that in a film featuring almost entirely British regional accents, accompanied by huge music tracks and bombastic sound effects, dialogue intelligibility would be key. Production Sound Mixer Tom Williams went to extremes to present us with mic options and to capture the best possible sound any scenario would allow, meaning technical ADR was minimal. In a collaborative process that evolved across three temp mixes, our talented dialogue editor Jeff Richardson used judicious snippets of ADR to add intelligibility wherever we deemed necessary.
Any field recording trips/custom recording sessions for the film? Where did you go, what did you capture, and how did you use the recordings?
LW: I sent a small team led by Ben Gale, an experienced Foley Artist and Field Recordist, to Calke Abbey, which is used for all interiors in Tommy’s house. We were granted access whilst production was still filming, meaning all the rooms were still “dressed.” This allowed intensive recording of all the props and assets available on location, ranging from Tommy’s typewriter and opium pipe to all the windows and doors. This provided us with a wide palette of bespoke recordings specific to the film and location.
We also recorded a wealth of footsteps on location, which allowed all footsteps to be tracklayed with live recordings, rather than relying on foley surfaces. I utilize this approach on all of my projects.
In addition to consistently recording first-rate dialogue tracks, Production Sound Mixer Tom Williams is in a class of his own when it comes to capturing the vehicles used on a shoot. Using a workflow he designed when working on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, he approached vehicles as characters, fitting them with multiple mics and recording in 32-bit float on a separate recorder. Again, these recordings provided a superb, unique palette for the film. It paid huge dividends when it came to the canal boats, allowing us to sonically change perspectives as the camera moved around the boat. The wealth of material meant we could find engine tempos that were close to matching the music, needing minimal time correction and thereby avoiding the potential artifacts this process can cause.
As you mentioned, Tommy is haunted by his past. How did you handle sound for these subjective flashbacks/memories?
LW: We experimented a great deal with this material both visually and sonically. My initial thought was to create a language that was formed specifically from the ghost of Tommy’s past. We initially took a deep dive into the previous 6 seasons of the show and pulled all relevant lines that seemed like they could be utilized from the dialogue track, lines from Grace, Polly, Arthur, John, Ruby, and even Alfie Solomon. I then put these through different plugin chains and delays to create a variety of diffused patinas for these ghostly voices from the past. For a while, Tommy walking through his house with the open windows was accompanied by a bed of these whispering voices calling out to him, speaking to him. These voices also played in the tunnel when Tommy is overcome by PTSD and in his dying montage.
My initial thought was to create a language that was formed specifically from the ghost of Tommy’s past.
However, throughout the process, we chipped away at them bit by bit. Initially, we concluded they felt imposed over the open windows sequence, detracting from the eerie, effective sound of wind whistling down the corridors whilst Tommy strains his ears for the sound of an intruder. Then the reverby laughter we placed to accompany Tommy’s vision of Ruby playing in the first reel began to feel like it was playing too heavily into the language of the horror genre. By default, each bit of this sound we chose to remove diluted the language and made the remaining material feel like an imposed afterthought and not of the world of our film.
Eventually, we resigned ourselves to our better judgment and took it all out. At this point, I turned back to the palette of explosions, screams, and bursts of gunfire I had established way back in the first season, along with the accompanying whistling tinnitus as Tommy gets mentally overwhelmed. We concluded that, ultimately, everything with Tommy comes back to his experiences in the First War. Working backward from this, we built a tinnitus whistle to emerge invisibly from the unanswered phone ring that announces the appearance of Ruby’s ghost.
Likewise, before Tommy has a panic-attack flashback in his wine cellar, we created a tinnitus whistle to emerge from the solitary ringing buzz of the cellar lightbulb before it becomes engulfed by the soundscape of a distant First World War tunnel fight. Applying the age-old adage that “less is more” made these sections feel more effective and narratively deliberate.
There are lots of great licensed music tracks in the film, like the cover of Massive Attack’s “Angel” during the lead-up to the fight at the Liverpool docks and the “Hunting the Wren” song during Tommy’s funeral. Did you have those to work against during editorial? Or did those track choices get finalized during the mix? How did the songs influence your approach to sound/mix for those scenes?
LW: All music choices were approved early, over the course of sound editorial. Director Tom Harper had established a very early dialogue with the composers. Many of the needledrops were recorded specifically for the film, such as “Puppet (a.k.a., “Freak”), “Teardrop,” and “Angel.” As such, for the temp mixes, we worked to evolving demos of these tracks, with the final pieces being recorded prior to the final mix. This process allowed for a very collaborative workflow between me and our composers, Ant and Martin.
Our initial sound design work was shaped and timed to their early demos; they were then given a copy of our effects stem following the first temp mix, to instruct any adjustments they wished to make to help the effects and music live in harmony.
Music was obviously king in these sequences, and it was vital that the sound design worked in complete conjunction with the tracks if it was to live.
Music was obviously king in these sequences, and it was vital that the sound design worked in complete conjunction with the tracks if it was to live. Each music track demanded a very different approach. For instance, the delicate rendition of “Teardrop” necessitated a sparse and delicate sound design. The rendition, fortunately by its nature, left plenty of space in the LF where I wanted to work. The low rumbles and waves of the flames devouring the Gypsy caravan articulate and ground the sequence, providing a physical weight to the on-screen destruction whilst acting as an atmospheric portent of Tommy’s emotional state and the impending chaos we all know is on the horizon.
“Angel,” however, is driven by its pulsing beat. Our accompanying sound design is deliberate and assertive, always rhythmically matching the track. It is a complex, meticulous sonic montage featuring ticking watches and clocks, running footsteps, distant explosions, and the driving throb of canal boat engines, weaving together multiple converging story strands and contributing to the relentless sense of unstoppable inevitability. We establish this rhythmic language even before the track begins at the end of the Gypsy caravan, pre-leading the incoming rhythm with three distant exploding bombs before the track itself starts.
What was the most challenging scene to mix? Why?
LW: The “Freak” sequence (featuring the song “Puppet” by Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C., Antony Genn, and Martin Slattery) was more complex than you would perhaps anticipate. Throughout the previews, we constantly changed the balance of how much sound we should feature.
Initially, Tom’s brief was to use the sparsest sound design possible. He loved how the track perfectly charted Duke’s internal conflict and mental state and did not want to distract from this.
We quickly realized that an absence of sound made the sequence feel like a music video and actually created an emotional disconnect from the characters.
However, watching the film back, we quickly realized that an absence of sound made the sequence feel like a music video and actually created an emotional disconnect from the characters. We needed to sonically ground the sequence with spot effects and atmosphere without fighting the song. As with many of the tracks featured in the film, we took the time to figure out the most effective balance. Ant and Martin also guided us through a journey with the track itself, with my fellow Re-recording Mixer Stuart Hilliker making adjustments to the stems, as they sought to roughen the edges of the superb 7.1.2 music mix that Score Mixer Paul Massey had created of the final track, trying to regain some aspects of immediacy and rawness they felt had been lost from the initial demo they had recorded.
I should add that both Stu and I felt incredibly fortunate to be working with the masterful music mixes that Paul created at Abbey Road.
What will stay with you from your experience of working on the sound of Peaky Blinders? What will you miss most about crafting sound for this historical crime drama?
LW: My journey with Peaky Blinders began 13 years ago, as Supervising Sound Editor on the first season, where I worked with director Tom Harper for the first time. The show was a sound designer’s dream; my brief was to create a sound akin to Mega-City One from Judge Dredd, but at the turn of the 20th century. I enjoyed both the show and the experience of working with Tom enormously, and I have continued to collaborate with Tom many times in the years since.
It is rare to get a chance to be part of something that captures the public consciousness and leaves such a significant cultural mark.
Unfortunately, conflicting schedules with a prior commitment in 2014 meant I was unable to look after the second season of Peaky, so I passed the baton to Jim Goddard, a close colleague of mine at Boom Post. Jim would go on to supervise the next four seasons. As the show grew in stature and reputation, it always felt something like “the one that got away” to me personally. It is rare to get a chance to be part of something that captures the public consciousness and leaves such a significant cultural mark. As such, it was enormously gratifying and rewarding for me and Stu to come together again with Tom and his fantastic editor Mark Eckersley to conclude this particular chapter in the Peaky Blinders story and finish a journey that we began together.
A big thanks to Lee Walpole for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!